Have you seen our missing newspapers?

The Diamondback represents a significant student voice at the University of Maryland, and we want to ensure that the entire newspaper is accessible online for research and enjoyment. Today, anyone who wants to access historic issues of The Diamondback can visit the Maryland Room in the Hornbake Library or the Periodicals Room in McKeldin Library and read them on microfilm. Soon, all of these issues will be available and searchable online thanks to the University Archives’ Launch UMD project and generous donors.

When graduate student assistant Jen Wachtel started recording information for the Diamondback Digitization project, we were disappointed to discover gaps in our Diamondback records from the 1910s and early 1920s. These issues neither made it to our bound volumes of newspapers nor consequently the microfilm reels we are preparing for digitization. The missing issues were published during the first years that women enrolled and earned degrees at UMD as well as the early years of Dean of Women Adele H. Stamp’s tenure.

We intend to make all issues available online, but we need your help. Do you have old issues of The Diamondback from the 1910s and early 1920s tucked away? Please contact University Archivist Anne Turkos at aturkos@umd.edu or 301-405-9060 if you have issues to donate or would like more information about the digitization project!

This is the second post in our #digiDBK series about important and interesting stories we’ve unconvered as we digitize The Diamondback. Read the first post here.